Synopsis
This report presents the findings from a survey of 164 educational institutions regarding their approach to Information & Communications Technology (ICT) procurement. The survey investigates the way that educational institutions like to purchase technology, as well as the major IT and business objectives influencing their IT investment strategies.
Scope
Provides insights into educational institutions’ preferred buying approaches.
Comprehend the business objectives that educational institutions are looking to achieve through their IT investment strategy.
Appreciate the IT objectives that educational institutions are looking to achieve through their IT investment strategy.
Understand the factors that are influencing educational institutions’ decision to select an ICT provider.
Understand which organisational roles influence ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets.
Summary
Why was the report written?
To highlight the criteria on which educational institutions select their ICT providers as well as the roles which have influence while making ICT purchasing decisions.
What is the current market landscape and what is changing?
Educational institutions are planning to increase their ICT spending in 2013 to improve their operational efficiency and increase student/staff satisfaction by offering a flexible education environment.
What are the key drivers behind recent market changes?
Educational institutions are gradually shifting some of their processes to hosted deployments, in order to achieve cost savings and reduce their ICT infrastructure complexity.
What makes this report unique and essential to read?
Kable Market Research Market Research has invested significant resources in order to interview CIOs and IT managers about their IT Procurement. Very few IT analyst houses will have interviewed 160+ ICT decision makers in the education sector in H2 2012.
Reasons To Buy
In order to curb costs, educational institutions’ spend is typically channelled through framework agreements issued by central ICT teams. Occasionally departments are also given a certain degree of freedom to procure products from their departmental budgets.
Many educational institutions are apprehensive of entrusting their intellectual property including educational and research content, to cloud service providers (public or private).
Educational institutions are looking to explore all available options for streamlining their operations in order to deliver more for less. This is evident from the survey, as institutions give the objective of raising efficiency the highest average rating of X on a scale of 1 to 4.
Educational institutions are not relying solely relying on government grants anymore, and are looking to diversify their income streams further, with IT playing a central role in opening up new revenue generation opportunities.
According to Kable Market Research’s survey, 51% of educational institutions state that their ICT infrastructure is either very complex or somewhat complex. 40% of educational institutions have an ICT infrastructure which is somewhat complex, with a wide variety of hardware manufacturers, operating systems, databases, applications, and other elements, whilst 11% of respondents describe their ICT infrastructure as ‘very complex’, with redundant and multiple layers of technological architecture.
Table of Contents
1 Enterprise ICT investment trends
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Survey demographics
1.3 ICT budget changes
1.4 ICT investment priorities
2 ICT procurement trends
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Purchasing channels
2.3 Objectives influencing IT investment strategy
2.4 IT objectives influencing IT investment strategy
2.5 ICT provider selection
2.6 Influencers
2.7 ICT infrastructure environment complexity
3 Summary
3.1 Educational institutions prefer to buy technologies direct from suppliers and are keen to deploy them on-site
4 Appendix
4.1 Definitions
4.2 Further reading
4.3 Contact the authors
List Of Tables
Table 1: Educational institutions – ICT survey geographic breakdown
Table 2: Educational institutions – ICT survey breakdown by size band (number of employees)
Table 3: Recent and expected ICT budget changes among educational institutions
Table 4: Current and future investment priorities of educational institutions across core technologies
Table 5: Educational institutions’ preferred approach to buying technologies
Table 6: Objectives which influence educational institutions’ IT investment strategy
Table 7: IT objectives which influence educational institutions’ IT investment strategy
Table 8: Factors influencing educational institutions’ decision to choose an ICT provider
Table 9: Influence of organizational roles in making ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets
Table 10: Complexity of ICT infrastructure in educational institutions
List Of Figures
Figure 1: Educational institutions – ICT survey geographic breakdown
Figure 2: Educational institutions – ICT survey breakdown by size band (number of employees)
Figure 3: Recent and expected ICT budget changes among educational institutions
Figure 4: Current and future investment priorities of educational institutions across core technologies
Figure 5: Educational institutions’ preferred approach to buying technologies
Figure 6: Objectives which influence educational institutions’ IT investment strategy
Figure 7: IT objectives which influence educational institutions’ IT investment strategy
Figure 8: Factors influencing educational institutions’ decision to choose an ICT provider
Figure 9: Influence of organizational roles in making ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets
Figure 10: Complexity of ICT infrastructure in educational institutions
